Flightrising - So You Think You Can Write

[zilentdreamer]

User: Skyeset
Prompt: "Torches" by X Ambassadors [link]

Vasha does not fight when she is forced to her knees before the throne.  She hisses in pain when her knees hit the marble floor and only just catches herself before her face can follow.  The manacles around her wrists were removed but the ache lingers, the skin raw and aching. With one last bone bruising squeeze to her shoulder the guard who had forced her down releases his hold and takes a step back.  Vasha ignores him, only having eyes for the man seated on the throne.

“So one of the Old Blood yet lives.”  The king’s fingers tap against the armrest of his throne, soft taps that seem to break through the heavy silence that had descended in the audience chamber once she was brought forward.  “Now what am I to do with you?”

There is a faint murmur of surprise and dismay amongst the gathered nobles.  Vasha can smell the acrid stench of their fear as the king’s words spread, stones casting ripples into the water.  No one is foolish enough to try and leave, not with their king watching, waiting for the first sign of treachery. They fear him and the power he has gathered here, in this dark mountain with a heart of ancient power.  Like moths to a flame they cannot resist the draw, and can only pray they are not taken by the flames.

She laughs.  It is soft at first.  Everything aches, from her eyes to her toes, and here she is slumped before her greatest enemy.  Beaten and alone, her allies too far to reach her in time, her greatest secret given life in only a few words.  She is cursed, her blood heavy with the power that had once ruled this realm before treachery brought down an empire.  Everything she has endured, everything she has lost, to end up here on her knees with blood in her teeth and her enemy victorious.  

The king’s eyes narrow and he makes a short gesture.  Her only warning is the creak of armor behind her and then pain explodes across her back as haft of a heavy spear is slammed into her back.  She ends up sprawled across the cold marble floors with their delicate mosaics detailing the fall of the Old Blood, the Black Empress herself thrown down from her dark mountain and all her blood with her, from her eldest son to the babe still learning to walk.

Her hand covers the image of the infant moments before the sword comes down and Vasha continues to laugh even as pain leaves her breath coming short.  She doesn’t fight when she is hauld back up and this time the king is staring her down with dark, furious eyes.

“Do you find your death that amusing?”  The king leans forward on his throne, a gilded thing of polished wood and gold inlay.  “Do you wish to join the rest of your kind that badly?”

“They are afraid of you,” Vasha says once she has the breath.  “Everyone is afraid of you. They whisper of your cruelty and your lust for blood.  They play court to you in the hopes that you will spare them or in the hopes they might feed your wrath with their enemies.”  There is a shift amongst the nobility at her words, and she turns to smile at them. “Three hundred years ago your ancestors rose up against the Black Empress and the power she wielded, but look at you all now.  Serving this wretch who has found power and thinks he knows how to wield it.”

The king’s face has grown dark with fury and his eyes sweep the assembled court long enough to ensure the flurry of whispers die before he looks back to Vasha.  He smiles down at her, a sharp slash that reveals the pointed teeth and too red lips. “Do you think to convince them to turn on me? I am not a fool, not like her.  They know what will happen if I am not here to hold the Mountain.”

Again, Vasha laughs and when the guard once again brings the butt of his spear down on her lower back, this time she will not yield to the pain.  She stays upright and when she can draw breath she looks up at him with her own sharp smile. “You do not hold the Mountain.”

Confusion flits amongst the nobles, but she is staring at the king and his narrow face and she smiles when she sees it, the fear.  “You are king but you are not Master. You have the Blood, that is true. But you don’t have enough. Not enough to hold the Mountain in truth.  Instead you have forced it to sleep.”

Where only moments before the king had stared at her with dark fury, now the fear is growing.  It blooms across his face in a slow awareness that is truly glorious. “I am the King,” he says and Vasha smiles with her teeth covered in blood.  “You are pretender.”

It is the work of a moment to [reach] and it is just like she remembers, the pulsing heart of power that lies in the center of the mountain.  The warp and weft of her realm, the shadow to every step she took within it’s borders. It had screamed in power and shaking earth the day she had been cast down, when her blood had soaked the earth and the air filled with the cries of her children.  With her dying breath she had crafted one last working, and in its grief the Mountain had reached back and caught her soul before it too could pass on.

Even forced into slumber it had guarded what remained of her life until one was born who could carry the burden of her memories, and her purpose. Until she could return and once more claim her place as Black Empress of the Mountain.  

Vasha gets to her feet as the very mountain trembles, a giant waking from its slumber.  The assembled nobles cry out as there is a crack, and the king tumbles forward, his gilded throne split into two.  Where it once stood the marble floor begins to tremble, and steadily a shape begins to rise up out of stone that has gone soft and malleable.  A new throne born of stone and power gradually takes shape and eventually hardens with one last shifting crack.

It is stark lines and stone that shines like black glass beneath the spirit lights that adorn the high sconces.  Ragged and aching, Vasha climbs the steps and stands before the dark throne before turning. She surveys the nobles in their silken finery and the palpable cloud of fear that covers them, as well as the frozen pretender who even now gets to his feet as if he has the right.  One glance from her and the stone softens beneath his feet until he sinks up to his knees. His shout of outrage is cut off when she lets the full weight of her fury touch the air. The very air hums with it, and she imagines she can hear the click of his teeth as he shuts his mouth.  

Vasha looks once more to the men and women who controlled the realm with their money and their connections, all of them descendents of traitors.  “You were afraid of him,” she says, smiling down at where the king was trapped in stone. She turns to smile at them and takes a deep breath and lets it out as the Mountain reaches for her.  The great doors of the hall grind shut and as they slowly realize that they are well and truly trapped, Vasha sits on her throne.

“I will show you what true fear looks like.”